Tropical patio, an ode to the kitchen of the Colombian Caribbean, to migration and the diasporas

It is winter in New York, a winter like many did not remember. Even so, this Thursday Stephanie Bonnin, 37, will open the tropical patio, a space that is difficult to classify: «I still have a hard time calling this restaurant.» At another time he manages to define it: “It is a gastronomic study that has a quanto pechichón in the morning. The Pechiche is a love. I, gastronomically speaking, I use it to say that it is something done with love. To a Pechichón rib sancocho we do not denied the rib, we do not denied the cassava, we do not denied anything. ”Ariel and Stephanie in the tropical patio kitchen. Romanel Románel Tropical Patio is essentially a kitchen: there are machines, an oven, refrigerators, marked jars, elements that only an expert knows how to name. There is something clinical in all that, and yet, the walls are pink and green, there are wicker plants and screens Vintage and two very friendly men in apron doing this and that. After the kitchen there is a cement bar in which anyone can arrive and sit, like Stephanie, who works from her laptop. Behind there is a covered space that is yet to be defined.-I don't want to do that tropical aesthetic proposed by Miami in the 80s, flamenco and palm trees. This tropics is mangoes and crocodiles, my love. Any weeks ago the patio menu was another. His end of the year trip to Colombia inspired change: the patio is an extension of the Caribbean. «After tanning my family, the smells, of going to eat at the places I liked, to question Colombianity … I told myself, why am I doing chilaquiles?» on the straight way. In 2011, Barranquilla left and arrived in Chicago to study English. He didn't know what it was to live outside his home, and immediately knew. Every exit from the country of origin is a detour. He lived the vicissitudes of the immigrant and also radically changed his life. He married, moved to New York and, thus, of decision in decision, I stopped being the lawyer and became a chef, the tropikitchen. The tropikitchen began in 2016. Bonnin had studied design, he had lost his father, he passed For a depression, and then he wondered what he wanted to do in a city like this. “The kitchen here (in the United States) is done as a migrant entrepreneurship. If you come to a country and you have no academic support to exercise another type of profession and want to undertake, what do you have to show? Any part of the world, gastronomy is a perfect vehicle to undertake because it is what you are. ”Before launching the project, Stephanie cooked at home, invited her friends and displayed the traditional ritual of a Latin American family: the comilona.Miguel Valenzuela preparing a dish. A point came that my husband told me that I couldn't be feeding for free every weekend. That's how I started. What motivated me most was to create a community. His project was founded on the nostalgia of a region that, then, because of his life experience in New York, overflowed the national limits. Stephanie uses the appointment to her friend and academic Luis Rincón Alba: «The Caribbean has a global, non -national conscience.» Stephanie's gastronomic proposal is specific, but inclusive, conscious, because, as it insists, food is political. The food is made of stories that she is interested in telling. That is why its great creative inspiration is Colombian anthropologist and cooking María Josefina Yance, whose culinary legacy has been rescued in recent years by the La Cocina de Pepina restaurant. With the tropikitchen, Stephanie returned to the Caribbean. Through a website and social networks he offered catering and pop-up services under three concepts: Arepería, the cauldron, and details of fine coquetry. The last one was the most creative and elevated project of its offer. This is how it began to reformulate traditional Caribbean food. That is why he decided to take classes. In 2017 he entered to study at the Institute of Culinary Education and, when graduating, he began working in Cosme, one of the most distinguished restaurants between New York's haute cuisine and the world.-Ellos managed to sell three tacos, which is food from Mexican Street, in 24 dollars. That for me was a feat and I wanted to understand why. There I knew what gastronomic crafts are. It was when he decided to give those hours to his project. He bought a cart and sold wrapped in the cold months and juices in the summer. Then he opened his house and began to design menus around a subject. «I started to do grandmother's dinner every Sunday.» That was the concept. He did dishes for twenty people and the menu had to evoke that so wide and in turn that we know as grandmother's food. At first the friends went, then the friends of the friends. The pandemic put everything in pause until one of her best friends wrote: «If you do a fried fish I eat it at the door of your house.» Shortly after Stephanie had a post on Instagram: «Fried fish tray, coconut rice, salad, patacón at $ 35 ″. 45 orders arrived. With Pablo, her husband, she set up a kitchen in the courtyard. Bakery boxes, wrapped the food sheet food and from her window, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, delivered the orders. Some ate outside and others were leaving. Vice and Munchies ran the story for YouTube and the networks: Selling Colombian Food Out of Bedroom Window in Brooklyn. «That video went around the world, Mama.» He turned crazy. The Covid finished and Bonnin traveled to Spain to study at the Basque Culinary Center because he wanted to learn avant -garde cuisine: incorporate techniques and technologies to mix them with the foundations of tradition. At the end, he understood that he also had to learn from people who truly lived tradition. He went to Colombia and there began to develop a gastronomic laboratory. His return to New York came to do three months residence at a hotel on the outskirts of the city and designed a completely Caribbean menu. “He opened my eyes because many times they ask you to adjust the flavors so that whites like it. But I absolutely compromise anything. ” Instead of giving bread, they served Pandebono. He made the famous Cartagenera post with Short Rib from French reductions. And for a few years he concentrated on the pop-ups of the Tropikitchen. Until one day, walking through the streets of Williasmburg, some friends convinced her to enter This is Latin America, a Latin American craft store. Miguel Valenzuela, who is today his partner, friend and accomplice in tropical patio, received it. They started with the idea of ​​opening a coffee in the back of the store, but Stephanie went further: «What if they rent it at night to do my culinary study?» That is a tropical patio. A project under construction that is announced by networks, between friends and who come to visit this is Latin America. The «Pechichón» coffee is open a few months ago. What will be in the future begins this Thursday. As one of the signs on the wall says: a place where the neotropic arises.